


telling stories in the dark

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Sod It All: Dis Brosca x Alistair Theirin [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Bedtime Stories, Broodmothers (Dragon Age), Gen, Orzammar (Dragon Age), Spooky, The Deep Roads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 14:51:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20744006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: As a girl Dis Brosca loved her sister Rica's scary stories.  As a Warden, she finds them more frightening than ever.





	telling stories in the dark

“Go on then, Rica, tell me that story,” Dis pled, pulling the blanket tighter against their necks. 

“You want to never sleep again?” Rica laughed, snuggling against her. “I don’t know why you like it so much. It’s a horrible story.”

Dis didn’t have the words to say why she liked the scariest tale in Rica’s arsenal. Somehow the terror told in her sister’s words made life in Dust Town a little better, a little smaller, a little more manageable. There were monsters worse than hunger and poverty in the dark of the Deep Roads, and sometimes that made her feel braver.

But she was ten years old, and she didn’t know how to say the muddled feelings in the back of her head, so she simply said, “You just tell it so well.”

Rica laughed, clearly proud. She’d told Dis before that someday she was going to get out of Dust Town, catch the eye of a noble and make him fall in love with her. She was pretty, but she was clever, too, and she collected stories that might entertain even a noble-born. Anything to make herself stand out, she said.

Rica swallowed, then dropped her voice into a low, smooth register. Dis closed her eyes. “Some dwarves say that the darkspawn are only the beginning. Some say in the forgotten dark that there are things fouler and more terrible even than the genlocks and the hurlocks, scrabbling in the dust. 

“But the young dwarf from Dust Town was too bold to heed those tales. She set out from home with her axes on her back, ready to find her fortune. She knew how to hunt for nugs and how to kill darkspawn; she knew how to make a fire for warmth, how to track lurkers and tezpadam. She carried enough water and nug jerky for a journey of weeks. 

“She traveled far into the Deep Roads, farther even than the Legion of the Dead. They spoke to her of monsters but she knew the best opportunities for treasure-hunting lay further and deeper in. They shook their heads. They never saw her again.

“She saw beautiful things on her journey. Stone in perfect spirals unmade by any smith’s hand. Fluted columns and glittering stalactites. Lyrium shining and singing in the dark. And the old thaigs, their buildings ancient and foreign and yet somehow familiar.

“Despite the beauty, the monsters were never far from her. She was forced to fight off entire packs of tezpadam, their eyeless faces staring up at her from where they had fallen in the dust. Lurkers stalked her footsteps, sliding through crevices in the stone to leap upon her. The giant spiders set traps of silk and strand for her in narrow shafts; the spider-silk dulled the blades of her axes so that she had to bludgeon the beasts to death.

“And always, always there was the threat of darkspawn. She would hear them before she saw them, their animal voices whining and shrieking in the passageways, the metal of their boots and their armor and blades clanking as they scurried towards her. Sometimes she could run and hide; sometimes she was forced to kill them, and she stood surrounded by so much darkspawn blood the stench made her vomit.

“But she could not withstand them forever. One day the darkspawn surrounded her; there were too many, and her blades were broken. She closed her eyes. And she hoped they would kill her before they devoured her flesh.”

“What happened to her?” Dis asked.

“They took her away,” Rica said, growing stiff beside Dis. “They took her away into the deep dark, and they poisoned her, and they tortured her, and they turned her into a monster far fouler and more terrible than themselves. She stared with bloodied eyes, and her jaws slavered and snapped, and her rotting hands reached for more and more, ever hungry, never sated.”

Rica paused. A long, shivering pause.

“Do you know what happened to her?” she whispered.

“No,” breathed Dis.

“_She came home!” _shrieked Rica, grabbing Dis’ arms with both hands and shaking her. Dis screamed, even though she always knew it was coming.

“Shut your mouths!” their mother yelled from the front room. They collapsed into helpless giggles.

“Thanks, Rica,” Dis said. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, silly.”

***

Twelve years later Dis stared up into Hespith’s tortured face, reaching out a hand in supplication despite the carnage that lay all around them. Before she could try to reach the other dwarf, Hespith stepped backwards – and over the edge of the cliff she stood upon.

“No!” Dis screamed. She made to run for her, but Alistair’s hand was a heavy comfort on her shoulder.

“She’s already gone, Dis,” he said softly. “I’m sorry. She didn’t deserve any of this.”

Dis took a deep breath, the axes dropping from her hands into the blood at her feet. The stench roiled around her, and she fought the urge to vomit. She forced herself to look at it. At _her._

The broodmother’s bloated corpse slumped forward, her foul spoor reeking, black blood and drool still pouring from her wound of a mouth. Her tiny eyes in her ruined face stared sightlessly. 

She’d been a woman like Hespith, like Dis, once; a woman with a name. Laryn. She could never have wanted this, what she became.

Dis fought back her gorge, and she made a promise to herself: to never, ever tell Rica the monster had been real.


End file.
